Babies are wonderful, aren’t they? I mean, I should know,
because mine is the wonderful-est. He’s the most beautiful, most special, best
of all things in the whole world is mine—that baby. How astonishing is it that
of all the possible babies in the world mine is the most perfect?!
Sorry,
everybody else, you’ll have to fight it out for second.
Then, they grow up.
The miracle of Christmas isn’t a
perfect baby, because we know every baby is perfect, but the true miracle is
this baby is God-incarnate, not destined to become a little sinner like the
rest of us; in fact, destined to be the Savior of the world. This
baby—Emmanuel.
See, the reality is that my perfect
little baby is also perfectly broken. For all the love I have for him, I can’t
pretend he isn’t a stinky little guy—literally and figuratively. I mean, nobody
is more self-centered than a baby. They are so inconsiderate of my sleep needs,
my sermon writing, the fact that I’m under the weather, and my desire to have
just ten stinkin’ minutes to myself. Geesh. We only let them get away with this
stuff because they are babies and they don’t know any better.
But this baby, this Jesus, was
somehow different. What would it look like for a baby to be born without that
inclination to turn in on himself? Honestly, how much did Mary and Joseph luck
out when Jesus was waiting to feed at their convenience? Or when he took
conveniently-timed bathroom breaks? There were lucky, that is, until they
understood the cost. This child—this once-in-a-universe happening—had an
ultimate destination—a telos—that didn’t fit his perfection. Or, rather, maybe
it fit it perfectly. In this broken world, all things bright and beautiful end
up at the cross. Christmas is the start of that road to Golgotha, those first
steps from manger to tomb.
Because babies are so beautiful and
so fragile, this is a move we are naturally scared to make. Come on, pastor.
Don’t bring that stuff into this. Let’s stay with Christmas—none of this Good
Friday/Easter stuff. But this ignores the reality that Christmas is part of the
Easter story and vice versa; it’s all connected, and there is a reason that the
hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. This is not just
happy-go-lucky nonsense. Tonight is the real deal.
It’s our opportunity to be honest that we are scared of
what might happen, of what does happen, of what has happened. We all have our
stories that lead us to the cross. Christmas is truly the time where all our joys
and sorrows meet. And yet—and yet!—this baby in the manger comes to bridge that
divide between things lost and found, things broken and mended, things dead and
alive. The Christ-child wasn’t born to be cute. I’m sure he was. So is
mine—cuter, in fact. No, Jesus was born to set us free—to save us. We need
saving, because we aren’t perfect. None of us are. And we weren’t born that way
either, no matter how persistently our parents believed it for a time. We never
were perfect—not even when we looked it.
That Jesus was born to die is
evidenced by those three kings that we sing about each year. And what were
those kings bringing as those first Christmas presents? Well, gold, yes, a
symbol of wealth and privilege, but also frankincense and myrrh, traditionally
used in embalming and burial rituals. That’s right, the kings came to the baby
giving a gift of burial incense. Christmas is the day where life meets death
meets new life.
This is every Sunday in the Christian
Church, actually. Life meets death meets new life. Again and again. Sure, maybe
you’ve been told that church is about teaching you to do the right things, or
to be a better person, or to climb the spiritual ladder, but that’s bogus. You
don’t become a better person because you go to church. Rather, you encounter
that intersection of life and death and new life, which begs you to wonder—and
that’s really what this season is about: WONDER—what more is there? What lies
right there where life meets death? Is it this baby—this Jesus?
And if you discover this Jesus
living at the intersection of life and death, then all of that other stuff
doesn’t really matter. You don’t go out and become a better person to please
God. Rather, having seen what stands between life and death, your entire
worldview is changed. It’s not about being good or bad anymore; it’s about
knowing the one and only thing that saves us. Then, rather than turning to God
out of fear, we turn out of joy, even bringing burial spices to the manger because
we know that death is no longer that thing to be feared.
I don’t think the kings knew it, to
be honest. I don’t think they had a clue what they were doing. They probably
looked around the expensive rack of palace junk and said, “This will do!” while
their wives buried their heads in their hands, saying “Oh, God, they brought
that frankincense to another baby
shower?! Next time we’re sticking to the registry.” And, yet, it is just the
right gift for just the perfect baby.
Me? I don’t want it. I don’t want to
think on my baby’s mortality, because I am a flawed person whose love for my
family overwhelms my awareness of the baby lying at the cross. I suspect most
of you are the same. If you have babies, baby-like or grown, they are exempt
from the ponderings of life and death, and yet—AND YET—when we baptize babies,
we do so into the death of Christ, drowning the old sinner and raising us up as
a new creation. We do this only because this Christ-child went there first.
Without Jesus, there would be no assurance that this long
night would have any morning. Without Jesus, the intersection between life and
death may well be a brick wall—an end with no future. Without Jesus, our hopes
and joys would be dependent on the whims of nature. This Christ-child means
absolutely everything.
So that, even when I love my own baby too much—when I
believe on some level that he will be the thing that saves me—that he will be
my legacy and that is what
matters—even then, Jesus stands where I cannot, and says, “You foolish dummy.
You’ve spent your life preaching this stuff, but when it comes down to it,
there are other gods you worship, pretend what you will. But OK. OK! I have
entered this world in the humblest way, born just like all of you, for your
sake, so that even poor little sinners like you will find salvation.”
This is the great Christmas present we don’t deserve—the
end of the story that the frankincense and myrrh foretell. Today is about a
baby who came to set us free. He sure wasn’t cuter than my baby, but you know
what? It’s only because of him that my baby’s cuteness matters. It’s only
because of Jesus that I can enjoy it—that I can live in something other than
fear. It’s only because of Jesus that we are set free—free to live, free to
love, to lose ourselves for the sake of the good news that that intersection
between life and death has been bridged by something greater.
Jesus came to be the perfect baby—one who was set toward
the cross from the moment he opened his eyes.
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